Where Dreams & Darkness Collide
by Alethnya
Summary: Khan has lost everything and knows precisely who to blame. Where unparalleled genius meets incalculable grief, a thirst for vengeance is born – but not everything is as it seems. While he plots the downfall of Section 31, Rebecca Duval remains a prisoner to it, guarding her secrets and waiting for the chance to make her jailers pay. Sequel to Somewhere I Have Never Travelled.


**A/N: Hello, hello, hello! I know…it's been a while. Longer than I'd hoped, but hey...life happens. Anyway, here it is – the sequel to Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. Hopefully it continues to live up to all of your expectations! As promised, a lot of it will be from Khan's perspective. However, there will be a healthy dose of Rebecca as well. This story will carry through the events of Into Darkness, though keep in mind that this series is very definitely AU.**

 **Thank you to my beta, Xaraphis. Here we go again, baby sis!**

 **And now…on with the show!**

* * *

 _(Stardate 2258.320)_

Khan was left in darkness once the swirling light of the transwarp beam had faded. For a long moment, he stood, unmoving; arms hanging at his sides as he stared across the frozen landscape of shadowed trees and moon-bright snow, to the hulking outline of the cabin that he had never intended to see again. Around him…silence. Thick…oppressive… _empty_. The cold – brutal and pervasive – seeped into him, burning his lungs with every stilted inhale, puffing from between his lips with every ragged exhale.

" _Stop being dramatic – it's not that cold, Khan."_

Her words floated across his memory; her voice…so light, so playful. It felt like a lifetime ago that he had watched her romping through the snow, grinning broadly. She had been particularly lovely, with her pink cheeks and red nose, eyes absolutely lustrous with delight. Even through his ill humor, he had reveled in her joy – a rare and entrancing sight to behold.

He winced, shying away from the memory. It was too much and he could not help but compare the Rebecca of yesterday to the Rebecca of only scant minutes previous. Compare, contrast and realize fully just how swiftly life could utterly, _utterly_ change.

He had so rarely seen her as lighthearted as she had been when they arrived at Inari the previous morning. The simple, honest pleasure etched across her face had squeezed at his heart, and he had been filled with an urgent desire to keep it there for as long as possible. Unfortunately, _as long as possible_ had not been terribly long at all.

The pleasure had faded, the light dimmed until suddenly, she was lying before him – _dying in front of his very eyes_ – and staring up at him with such sorrow. Remorse. Apology.

 _Apology_.

Khan let out a bark of rough, unsteady laughter – flinching at just how sharply it rang through the night. He stumbled sideways, catching himself on the thick trunk of a pine, bark crumbling beneath the pressure of his hand. He leaned into it, breathing hard against the violent churning of his own emotions.

She had believed herself at fault.

That _she_ had failed _him_.

Khan shut his eyes, slumping beneath the weight of his own guilt.

Only one of them had failed – and it was not her.

~o~o~o~

 _It had not worked._

 _The chest tube was seated and sealed…but it had not worked. He could see it in her eyes as she looked up at him, in the tears that spilled over her lashes and across her too-pale cheeks. He could feel it in his chest, in the crushing weight of his own terrible certainty, pressing harder and heavier with every increasingly desperate breath she fought to gasp out._

 _He was not a doctor; his admittedly limited medical knowledge was primarily theoretical. What little practical experience he possessed – particularly that which was germane to the situation – he had already exhausted. And it had not worked._

 _She still could not breathe. And he…_

 _He had no idea what to do._

" _Not…sorry…" Her voice was weak, the words were not. He looked down to find her fingers, slippery with blood, scrabbling ineffectually at the strap that sat across his chest – the strap of the device that he had forgotten about almost entirely in his rush to save her. He stared, paralyzed not by her frailty – even now, even like_ _ **this**_ _, there was nothing frail about Rebecca Duval – but by the enormity of his own culpability._

 _He had done this. This was his fault._

" _You…need it," she continued, the rolling lilt of her voice reduced to a breathy, croaking rasp; grasping fingers twining themselves around the strap and tugging at it with more urgency than her traitorous body could manage. "_ _ **Use**_ _…it."_

 _For a moment, he could only continue to stare, unable to draw the necessary connections between word and action. When he did – when he understood what she was demanding of him – he went rigid, caught somewhere between shock and fury. "No," he whispered, the word tasting like ashes in his mouth._

 _She was telling him to save himself. To leave her. To_ _ **abandon**_ _her._

 _He pulled back from her, horrified that she would even_ _ **suggest**_ _such a thing. "No!"_

 _As was her wont, his refusal only appeared to fuel her determination – he could see it in her face; could see the effort draining what little strength she had left. "Promise…me," she insisted, undeterred. "_ _ **Use it**_ _…escape…_ _ **live**_ _…"_

" _Enough!"_

 _The word erupted from him and he reached up, hands tearing at his hair as he looked away from her – looked_ _ **anywhere**_ _but at her – his composure crumbling; slipping between his fingers…like everything else that he treasured. "I will not listen to this!"_

 _She spoke as if…as if…_

" _ **Promise**_ _…"_

 _~o~o~o~_

A gust of wind blew through the trees, an icy shock that pulled him back to the present as it whistled over trembling needles and groaning branches. It eddied around him, sending a violent shiver down his spine and he moved away from it, spinning around to put the tree at his back, seeking what meagre shelter the thick Scotch pine could afford.

A useless endeavor – the latest in a long line of utterly _useless_ endeavors.

The wind shifted with him, curling around the trunk to buffet him anew, sending snow dancing across his boots and tossing strands of sweat-damp hair into his eyes. He lifted his arm, cold-stiff fingers raking his hair away from his face and knocking loose the ice crystals that had begun to form in the sub-zero chill. The tattered remains of his sleeve ghosted across his cheek with the motion and he stopped short, fingers balling into a fist as he slowly lowered his arm. With burning eyes, he traced the dark stains of blood tattooed across the pale skin of his forearm.

 _His_ blood. Blood that had marked him as superior from the day that he was born. Blood that had given him the strength and cunning to conquer and rule a vast Empire.

Blood that had proven weak – _useless_ – just as he had needed it most.

 _~o~o~o~_

 _She was dying._

 _Khan knew it…but he refused to accept it._

 _His blood had healed her once before, it would do the same for her now and_ _ **damn**_ _logic for attempting to convince him otherwise. Yes, she had lost a great deal of blood. Yes, she was fading before his very eyes._

 _But it was not too late._

 _He would not allow it to be too late._

 _He slapped the portable transfuser down hard on the medtable beside her, the profusion of tubing fluttering from the force of his determination. His fingers brushed her skin as he tore her sleeve in two and he grit his teeth, trying very hard not to acknowledge the way his stomach clenched. She was cold. So much colder than she should have been._

 _Ignoring the sick sense of foreboding that still haunted him despite the promise of life thrumming inside his very veins, he turned her arm over and inserted the hypocatheter into the first vein he could find before repeating the process on himself. Once that was done, he activated the machine, rhythmically pumping his fist and watching with frantic eagerness as the tube trailing from his own arm began to fill with a thick flow of dark red blood._

 _The first, tentative tendrils of relief began to unfurl in his chest and he allowed himself to finally believe that it might be possible; that he might yet be able to save her…_

" _I…love…you…"_

 _His head jerked up, eyes finding hers. Her lips had gone blue, her skin nearly so. She was looking up at him from behind heavy lids, the doors that had so often been closed to him flung wide now as she showed him a look of such naked adoration that it stole the breath from his lungs._

 _Those words. That look._

 _He had known that the day would come when she would offer him the full measure of the feelings she held so tightly locked within the confines of her battered heart. He had looked forward to that day, eager to know precisely what it would feel like to hear her admit to what he already knew. Even more than that, he had anticipated offering her his own confession; seeing her face as he shared with her the long-cherished truths of his own cautious heart._

 _But never, in all his countless imaginings, had it ever been like this. Never had he dreamt that the sound of those words from her lips would fill him with a dread so thick that it choked him…_

 _~o~o~o~_

Khan recoiled, tearing himself from the encroaching darkness of his memory. Her words – her soft, sweet, _dying_ declaration – haunted him. Even now, he could hear the echo of her confession through the long, dark corridors of his mind; hear it sighing on the wind...and it _shattered_ him.

His arm still hovered in front of his face. Mocking him. _Taunting_ him.

Furious – with the universe, with _himself_ – he reached across his body, smearing his thumb through the all too tangible evidence of his failure, flicking it down to the crook of his elbow and pressing against the still-tender wound there. Hard, he pressed and then harder still, until fresh blood flowed from the torn flesh. It throbbed, a cruel ache that he welcomed. Relished.

He deserved the pain.

He deserved worse.

 _Far_ worse.

 _~o~o~o~_

 _He knew the instant that it happened; heard her final, shuddering breath, felt the change in the air – the sudden, sharp emptiness that she left behind her. He froze, eyes locked on the machine in front of him, unwilling to look…refusing to see._

 _If he did not look…if he did not_ _ **see**_ _, she could not be…_

 _He turned his head slowly, reluctant eyes crawling slowly up the length of her too-still body, tracing the topography of her, more familiar to him now than even his own. When he reached her face, he faltered – the sight that met his eyes nearly bent him in half._

 _Her head was tipped toward him, bloodied lips parted and eyes…blank._

 _Empty._

 _With a low, agonized keen of denial, he fell forward, fingers scrabbling to catch hold of the wrist that lay nearest to him, desperately seeking a pulse that he already knew he would not find. The spark of her had fled; her fire, smothered…and Khan had felt something, some corresponding light inside of himself, go dark. She was gone, and he had never told her…_

 _His Rebecca was gone…and he had never felt so cold._

 _~o~o~o~_

Swallowing hard against the ache in his chest, Khan clenched his fists, squeezing tight – so tight that he could feel the bite of his fingernails against his palm. When the pain turned sharp, he eased his grip, turned his palm up. Peeling the fingers of his hand open one at a time, he surveyed the bloody crescents cut into his skin dispassionately. He ran his thumb over them, smearing the fresh blood, mixing it with the older, darker blood that had begun to dry upon his skin.

 _Her_ blood. Marking him. _Branding_ him.

It belonged there, he thought distantly, eyes burning as he brought his hand nearer and nearer to his face, eyes riveted to the last bit of her that he would ever touch. He lifted his other hand, hesitant fingers tracing lightly through the tangible consequences of his arrogance; the brutal evidence of his thoughtless pride and unchecked temper.

His fierce, indomitable Rebecca. How she had fought – how she had _tried_ to make him see reason and how he had failed her in every conceivable way…

 _~o~o~o~_

 _It was the trill of the machine, still whirring away at his side that snapped him from his horrified stupor. Numb, Khan shifted his gaze from her face to find that his blood had finally reached its goal. He watched it pump into her veins and felt a cold, grim determination rise up within him, setting icy fingers into his heart and chasing away the grief that threatened to consume him. It was his strength that she needed now, and it was his strength that she would have._

 _This could not be their end. This could not be their goodbye._

 _With cold, calculating purpose, Khan vaulted up onto the medtable, ignoring the sharp pull of the wound in his side as he straddled her tiny, too-still body, knees pressing tightly to her sides. Taking care not to dislodge the needles in either his arm or her own, he cupped his hands, one atop the other, fingers weaving together as he laid the pair of them directly over her heart and began to press, up and down, up and down…_

 _The blood needed time – time to work, time to heal. He could give it that. He could give_ _ **her**_ _that._

 _He would_ _ **make**_ _her heart beat._

" _You cannot die," he insisted, resolute gaze riveted to her face as he continued chest compressions. "I refuse to let you die."_

 _But she would not listen; her heart remained stubbornly silent beneath his hands…and as the minutes passed, Khan's hope began to wane. And in its place, rising up from within him, engulfing him utterly, came the despair._

 _The_ _ **rage**_ _._

" _Enough of this," he roared at her, desperately trying to force her heart into obedience. "You_ _ **will**_ _wake up, Rebecca! Open your eyes!_ _ **Breathe**_ _!"_

 _Her body jerked limply with the ferocity of his movements, flopping like a ragdoll as he pumped her heart over and over and over again. Harder and faster he pressed, and then harder and faster still, until suddenly a voice screamed at him that it was too hard. Too much. He had gone too far in his desperation, was being too rough._

 _He was_ _ **hurting**_ _her…_

 _A sob – of frustration, of regret, of sheer, unbridled_ _ **loss**_ _– tore from his throat, eyes burning and chest aching. His elbow buckled, breaking the rhythmic pulse of his compressions and nearly sending him sprawling atop her. He caught himself at the last moment, his face hovering just above hers, his hair tumbling into his eyes, sweeping against her nose, catching in her lashes._

 _ **Warm**_ _. She was always so warm…but now…_

 _It all vanished then; his anger – his raw, raging fury – it simply evaporated. In its place, rushing in to fill the emptiness that had been left behind…_ _ **pain**_ _. It filled him up, crushing him from the inside out. Images of her, conjured from the depths of his anguish, flashed through his mind._

 _Rebecca smiling and happy as she laughed at something he had said, her lips twisting wryly, a shadow of sadness lingering behind her dancing eyes that he wished that he knew how to erase entirely…_

 _Rebecca, so furious with him that she was nearly shaking with it, angry words flying like poisoned barbs from her merciless tongue and he could not help but think her the most magnificent creature he had ever laid eyes upon…_

 _Rebecca, staring up at him, her heart in her eyes and her hands on his body; kissing him with a depth of passion that humbled him and left him breathless with longing._

 _Another sob escaped him, his shoulders shuddering as he held himself above her. "You cannot do this," he begged, voice a ragged, rasping whisper. "You cannot leave me like this…you cannot…"_

 _His grief swelled, overflowing the bounds of his self-control and swamping him with a tidal wave of suppressed emotion – shattering him on the rocks of his own culpability. Faces swam through his mind; so many different faces and he shied from them, shoved them away, down into the depths of his subconscious mind. He could not think of them now; could not let himself remember._

 _So much. He had lost…_ _ **so**_ _much this day…_

" _Please, Rebecca," he croaked, barely able to hear the words past the howling in his heart, "please…I cannot lose you too…"_

 _He sucked in a shuddering breath at that, feeling a foreign and entirely horrifying tremble in his arms…in his legs. His strength – ever stalwart – was beginning to flag, lessened as it was by grief, injury and the loss of blood that even now continued to pump into her body. He was_ _ **failing**_ _her, even more than he already had done._

 _Khan let out a wail, shoving himself back upright as he fumbled to begin the chest compressions once more, redoubling his efforts. Tears slipped down his face and he choked on the suppressed sobs that sat like stones in his throat, in his chest. Distantly, he became aware of a pounding from across the room; of thumping bangs and muffled shouts, issuing from the far side of the medbay doors._

 _They had been found out. Marcus' wolves were, quite literally, howling at their door._

 _His arms buckled and this time, he was not able to catch himself – he crashed forward, body crumpling down atop hers with a broken cry of frustrated defeat. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard, his forehead pressed to the cold steel of the medtable, just beside her equally cold face. He closed his eyes, swallowed down a fresh surge of shattered grief._

 _It was over, he knew._

 _She was gone._

 _~o~o~o~_

The call of an owl, low and lonely, shattered the silence and Khan lifted his head, chasing the sound with his eyes. The animal – large, grey and yellow-eyed – stood perched on the roof of the cabin, staring down at him curiously, head twitching to the side as if trying to suss him out. He stared back, heart-sore and soul-weary and tired down to the very marrow of his bones.

The owl let out another whooping cry before throwing its wings wide and leaping out into the darkness, eerie and unearthly as it rode the icy crest of the night wind. It dove, hurtling toward the ground, curved talons snapping shut round its prey – a fat vole. It tore into the tiny creature, hooked beak making quick work of the rodent.

Distantly, Khan could hear the swift, strong beats of the predator's wings as it spiraled up into the night, clutching tight to its conquered prey…but he did not see it go.

Could not see anything, save for the trail of footprints that lay just in front of where the owl had claimed its supper – just in front of where he stood, the solid press of a tree at his back. Two sets of boot-prints, half lost to the shifting snow, stretched up to the cabin ahead…and off into the trees behind. One large, one small. One his…one _hers_ …

He lurched forward, crashing to his knees beside the tracks and reached out to trace the outline of one of the smaller prints; bare fingertip skating through the snow without ever feeling the cold. Only yesterday, her determined stride had pressed that shape into this very ground. Only yesterday, she had walked at his side, so steady, so determined.

Now she was gone. _Dead_.

Rebecca Duval – his Rebecca – was dead…and he had done what he had sworn that he would never, _ever_ do.

He had left her behind.

 _~o~o~o~_

 _His mind had gone quiet. The machine beside him continued to work, the might of Io continued to pound down the doors, but inside Khan's mind, it was silent. Eerily, sickeningly silent._

 _Resigned now, and almost shockingly weak, he leaned sideways, attempting to shift himself off of her, careful now –_ _ **so**_ _careful – not to jar her unnecessarily. His legs gave way on him yet again as he attempted to climb down and he tumbled toward the floor, catching himself on the very edge of the medtable._

 _He steadied himself, planting his feet as firmly beneath him as he could manage and out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the hypocatheter, still seated in the crook of his elbow. Slowly, hesitantly, he reached across his body, catching the suture wing of the catheter between his thumb and forefinger. For a long moment, he simply stared at it, but then, from somewhere deep within came a low, banked pulse of anger, a mere echo of his earlier rage._

 _He slid his fingers backwards, wrapping them around the tubing that fed into the catheter and ripped it out, flinging it away from him with far more force than necessary._

 _Useless._ _ **Pointless**_ _._

 _She was dead. There was no healing that – no curing it. He had been a fool to think otherwise._

 _The sounds from without were getting ever louder. They were making quick work of the doors, despite his having sealed them shut on the way in._

 _He was running out of time._

 _She would be furious, he knew; furious with him for lingering, but even now – even knowing that she was gone in every way that truly mattered – he could not bring himself to leave her._

 _He sighed deep, letting his eyes slip closed as he braced himself on the table, arms splayed wide, palms pressed flat to its chilly surface. Warm blood trickled down his arm, the fresh wound burning at the edges of his awareness, joining the distant throb of the older wound in his side. It had been easy to ignore the screaming of his own nerves, first in the face of his anger and then in the face of her far greater need…but now, weak as he was, it became more difficult to dismiss._

 _It would be so easy, he thought. So simple to just…stay. To let them come. To let them take him._

 _There was nothing left for him now – nothing left to fight for. Everything he had ever cared about, gone. Everyone he had ever loved, dead. He had lost them all, every single one of them, and he…_

 _He was tired. So very, very tired._

 _And yet…_

 _ **Promise me…**_

 _Khan lifted his head; opened his eyes to look at her – drinking in the elegant sweep of her dark brows, the gentle swell of her cheeks, the delicate point of her chin._

 _With one arm still braced on the table, he lifted a trembling hand to her face, brushing back her hair; freeing the strands that clung to the blood marring her cheek and chin before tucking them tenderly behind her ear. "It would be quick," he told her, voice a thin rasp, "They are many and I," he sighed, shaking his head lightly. "I am weak, Rebecca. I would fight and I would fall…and it would be finished."_

 _He traced a fingertip across each eye, slipping them shut; followed the line of her nose, down over her lips, circled her mouth, pushing it gently shut. His breath hitched and he blinked hard against the sting of oncoming tears, the reality of his loss a massive, crushing weight in the center of his chest. "I do not wish to leave you," he whispered, voice breaking. "I swore to myself – to_ _ **you**_ _– that I would never leave you."_

 _ **Promise me…**_

 _He leaned down, laid his forehead against hers, eyes once more sliding shut. "But you would never forgive me, would you?" He nuzzled her, breathing deep of her scent, masked beneath the coppery tang of blood, but still apparent – still there. "As I have failed you," his voice broke, the words bitter on his tongue, "_ _ **more**_ _than sufficiently for one day, I shall not tempt your disapproval further."_

 _He pulled back, eyes brimming with tears. He stared down at her through their watery burn, committing to memory her curious perfections and her extraordinary flaws._

 _Finality, swift and cruel, tore at him. Gutted him._

 _He choked on a sob, eyes slamming shut as he dropped his forehead to hers, one hand sliding beneath her, cupping the back of her head and holding her to him – already missing her so much that it staggered him._

" _I shall do as you asked," he murmured, a lone tear tracing a scalding path down his cheek as his lips brushed delicately – sweetly – against hers. "But, my love," he paused, the unintentional confession – too little, too late – shattering him all over again. "My sweet, savage love," his voice trembled around the words, so very different from what he had once dreamt; a bitter end rather than a joyous beginning, "my wild, wicked,_ _ **relentless**_ _love…I shall never forgive myself for it. I shall never forgive myself for_ _ **any**_ _of it."_

 _For one last, long moment, he stayed as he was. Then, with a shuddering sigh, he stood up…pulled away and finally, reluctantly, turned his back on her. Forcing one foot in front of the other, feeling each footfall like a knife to the heart, he crossed over to where the last remaining transwarp beaming device lay, having been carelessly discarded atop an empty medtable in his rush to help…_

 _No. He could not think of her. He would not think of her. Not now._

 _Steeling himself, he reached out, lifted the long, black cylinder up into his arms. Twisting it around, he activated the device, listening with dispassionate disinterest as it whirred to life. Once it was ready, he laid his finger over the trigger, letting his eyes fall closed._

 _Behind him, the doors began to collapse beneath the onslaught from without, the shouts and curses growing ever louder. By the time the doors finally gave way, allowing Marcus' army to pour into the room, it was almost as if he had never been there at all._

 _~o~o~o~_

Khan let out a choked cry of helpless rage, slamming his fist down into the snow, obliterating the print entirely, a futile longing clawing at the back of his throat…at the chasm of his withered heart.

Gone. They were all _gone_ – his people…his Rebecca. They were all _dead_ …and he had as good as killed them himself.

With another hitching roar, he surged up to his feet, retreating from the palpable reminder of precisely what he had lost. Bolting toward the cabin, he tore up the stairs and crashed through the door, nearly knocking it off its hinges in his haste and desperation. Stopping just inside, he stared around, wild-eyed and shaking.

There, before the heating unit, lay the blankets she had slept on the night before; abandoned, just as she had left them. He stumbled toward those blankets now, collapsing down into them, burying his face into the scratch of fabric that smelled so much of Rebecca that it sent a shudder through him. Exhausted in every possible way, he breathed deep, lulled by her scent until, slowly – finally – he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

 _(Io Facility – the next day)_

Darkness surrounded her; cradled her. It was easy there, nestled deep, deep down inside that tranquil oblivion. Easy and safe and quiet and just…

Just… _wrong_.

It taunted her, that wrongness. Dug at her with a stubborn persistence that she couldn't ignore – that she didn't _want_ to ignore. And so, being Rebecca Duval, she chased after it. Followed it up, up, up through all that darkness, struggling her way towards the world beyond her sphere of comfortable nothingness with every ounce of determination that she could muster.

As she fought her way through the quicksand of unconsciousness, awareness began to trickle back in and with it, remembrance.

Remembrance…worry…and pain.

 _Lots_ of pain.

The bulk of it – the massive, aching center of it all – was her chest. It _throbbed_ in all kinds of ways that she had never even imagined that it could; far more ways than could be explained by a single stab wound, no matter how fatal. Because it _had_ been fatal, she could absolutely remember that much. She had known it even before the world had faded away.

He had known it too…even if he'd been bound and determined not to admit it.

 _Khan_.

A fear like nothing she had ever known before gripped her and gripped her _hard_. She'd told him to go. Had he? He had been so raw, so furious – without anyone left to hold him back, God only knew what he might have done.

 _Oh, you stubborn son of a bitch,_ she swore to herself – to the universe at large, _you best have done as I told you or I swear to_ _ **Christ**_ _…_

"...to explain this one to me, Carlson. And I'd recommend you make it good. How the hell is she alive?"

 _Marcus_.

His voice cut through the concern and the pain, burned off the lingering fog and centered her as nothing else could have in that moment. Fury swelled and she dove into it headfirst, finding strength in the blistering scorch of it. Deciding very quickly that it was in her best interest to keep her eyes firmly shut – unconsciousness made a particularly effective cover for eavesdropping – she took care not to let her disgust for the old man show at all. A decidedly harder deception to pull off than it had been in the past, she soon discovered.

She had thought that she hated Marcus _before_. But now…

Now she wanted his head. Preferably detached from the rest of his miserable, vindictive body.

It certainly wasn't the time for that, though. She was far too weak to stand against him…and from the sounds of it, far too _screwed_ as well. Thinking as fast as she could under the circumstances, she shifted the hand on the opposite side of her body from where it sounded like Marcus was standing, unsurprised to feel the pull of a restraint. When a tiny jerk of her corresponding ankle produced the same result, she cursed inwardly, taking care not to so much as _flinch_ outwardly.

 _Definitely_ too screwed at present.

It wasn't exactly the reality she'd hoped to find on the other side of all that darkness, but still…it was preferable to nothing at all.

Hopefully it stayed that way.

"I don't…" the words came from just above her and she could hear the frustration in Carlson's voice. "I mean…it _looked_ …" she stopped again and Duval could actually hear the doctor rubbing roughly at her face. "Frankly…I have absolutely no idea how she's alive."

"That's about as far from a good answer as it gets, Doctor."

Oh, he _was_ pissed. Duval grinned inwardly, pleased to be the cause of his bad mood, if nothing else. At this point, she'd take whatever she could get where he was concerned.

"I'm well aware of that, _Admiral_ ," Carlson shot back sharply, reminding Duval of exactly why she'd always liked the older woman. "If I knew a better one, rest assured that I'd happily give it to you!"

A beat.

"But you can at least confirm that she was, in fact, _dead_?"

"Very much so. I called her myself." Carlson sighed again, sounding absolutely exhausted.

"And then?"

A hand smacked down onto the medtable beside her, the Doctor's frustration made abundantly clear. "And then she wasn't dead anymore! Honestly, Alexander, what more do you want me to tell you?"

"How about how the hell that could be even remotely possible?"

Marcus had moved closer to her and it was only the knowledge that she lacked the strength to see it through that kept her from launching herself at him.

"I've already answered that question a hundred times over the past several hours," Carlson snapped. "My answer hasn't changed in all that time and it's not about to change now. If you'd like a _different_ answer the next time you ask the question, my suggestion would be for you to get the hell out of my sickbay. Until you leave me alone and let me do my _job_ , I'm not going to be able to help you!"

Silence…and then, grudgingly…

"Fine." Marcus took another step closer and Duval grit her teeth, despising his proximity. "But I expect answers, Leah. Real answers. And I expect to have them _quickly_."

Carlson said nothing and Duval could hear Marcus moving away. He stopped after only a few steps, feet scuffing on the floor as he turned back. "I think it goes without saying that you'll keep her restrained at all times."

"Of course."

Another pause and Duval could feel the weight of Marcus' gaze upon her. "I want to be notified the second she wakes up. I've got one or two things I'd like to discuss with her."

"I'm sure you do." Carlson turned then and Duval could hear the shift of her feet against the floor, heard the slight shift in the sound of her voice. There was a thump, a rattle…and then a tricorder hummed to life. "Before you go…"

"What?"

Marcus' voice came from even further away this time – nearly to the door it sounded like. Carlson was leaning over Duval now, the tricorder chirping away as the doctor continued to scan her.

"If you want accurate answers, you're going to need to give me something a little bit more to go on," she said quietly, the tricorder whirring and beeping away. "I was here when the recovery team brought her in, Alexander. They weren't exactly forthcoming with the details of what they found on that ship…"

"Check her blood," Marcus cut in, impatience making his tone sharp, "and check it _thoroughly_. That should be all the jumping off point you need."

A huff and Duval could feel the breeze as Carlson dropped her arms back to her sides. "If I find anything unusual, I'm going to need more than _that_ to go on."

"If you find anything unusual, I'll give you more than that to go on. But until you find _something_ , we're just going to leave it at that. Understood, Doctor?"

"Understood." A pause – short but significant. "Sir."

"Good. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a hell of a lot of work to do."

More footsteps. A hiss. And then…

The bite of a hypospray against her neck caught her off guard and Duval let out a hiss of her own, only just managing to keep her eyes shut, though her head jerked ever so slightly to the side. A moment later, she heard the clatter as the hypospray was dropped back on the table and then a sudden warmth as Carlson leaned over her.

"I'm going to keep you under until I understand what exactly is going on," she said in a rush, her voice a whisper in Duval's ear. "If you wake up on your own again, I'd recommend you do _exactly_ what you just did – though maybe a little better than you just did it. I'm shocked that Marcus didn't see you testing those restraints."

The sedative was already doing its work, dragging at her; pulling her back down into the darkness. Duval fought it, wanting to know… _needing_ to know…

"Is he…alive?"

"You're really worrying about _him…"_

"Is…he…alive?"

"Yes." A pause. "At least, they assume so. No way to tell really."

Relief jolted through her and she slipped a little deeper. "Then…he got…he got away?"

A sigh, followed by a gentle hand stroking across her forehead. "Yes, Rebecca. He got away. Now shut up and go back to sleep. You're not well."

And she did, falling all the way back down into the warm, welcoming darkness. Only this time, it didn't feel so wrong.

Because this time, she knew.

 _He got away_.


End file.
